Posted on 05/20/2015 6:58:43 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine.
That sounds like a joke, but that’s actually more or less the model of a new wind turbine prototype. Instead of blades that turn in the breeze, the turbine is just a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet from the ground and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind thrums by.
The Spanish engineers who founded Vortex Bladeless in 2010 said they were inspired by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster (maybe not the best pitch for clean energy to a disaster-wary public, but I’ll leave that to their marketing department). Here’s how it actually works, from Wired:
"Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what’s known as vorticity, an aerodynamic effect that produces a pattern of spinning vortices. Vorticity has long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers, who actively try to design their way around these whirlpools of wind. And for good reason: With enough wind, vorticity can lead to an oscillating motion in structures, which, in some cases, like the … Tacoma Narrows Bridge, can cause their eventual collapse."
"At the base of the cone are two rings of repelling magnets, which act as a sort of nonelectrical motor. When the cone oscillates one way, the repelling magnets pull it in the other direction, like a slight nudge to boost the mast’s movement regardless of wind speed. This kinetic energy is then converted into electricity via an alternator that multiplies the frequency of the mast’s oscillation to improve the energy-gathering efficiency."
The result is a turbine that’s 50 percent less expensive than a bladed one, nearly silent, and, as one of the turbine’s engineers put it, “looks like asparagus” (sorry, Quixote). And while each Vortex turbine is also 30 percent less efficient at capturing energy, wind farms can double the number of turbines that occupy a given area if they go bladeless. That’s a net energy gain of 40 percent for you non-mathletes out there.”
Plus, the turbine has no gears or moving parts; theoretically maintenance could be much easier than a traditional bells-and-whistles spinning one. No shade to my three-bladed friends, but I can’t complain about a cheaper, more accessible wind-powered future.
“That’s awesome! I was hoping someone would invent a wind mill which sucked even more at capturing energy!”
Anything to get rid of those hideous windmill farms.
I just kept wanting it to stop.
The explanation of the principal of operation was as clear as mud. Any body have any insight as to how it is supposed to work?
They claim 6-8 months for regular wind turbines here in the Pacific Northwest.
“They claim 6-8 months for regular wind turbines here in the Pacific Northwest.”
Is that plausible?
This is true — a colleague once calculated the temperature drop in Europe if all European energy were generated by windmills. It was a few Centigrade degrees.
Buzzkill Yardstick
Sounds promising....
Yes - with massive taxpayer subsidies...
Otherwise not so much...
So, the government is committing fraud again.
Isn’t anyone in Congress concerned that, building more of these windmill farms could make this country take off and fly away?
Glad somebody else sees where this is going...
“Isn’t anyone in Congress concerned that, building more of these windmill farms could make this country take off and fly away?”
Look on the bright side: maybe we’d land on Iran—right on the Wicked Ayatollah of the East.
It’s a matter of thermodynamics: removing energy from the wind in order to create work will result in a temperature loss of the air.
The sub-year payback is independent of any subsidies. It is simply time to pay for itself. A million kWh over a year raises a lot of revenue.
So the things can pay for themselves.
No mechanical interfaces but it does have inherent material strains which will lead to fatigue and eventual failure.
That doesn’t sound quite right, if I may say so. What causes wind is a high barometric pressure in one area and a low pressure in another and the air rushes from the high toward the low. As it rushes through a wind farm it may be deflected momentarily by a windmill blade or a “stalk of asparagus”, but once it has passed the impediment the barometric pressures are the same as ever and it rushes on again, just as before.
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